Small Mercies
by Ravenspear
Summary: Adam, Michael, and their ridiculously domestic life. Adam/Michael.


**Title: **Small Mercies******  
****Pairing:** Adam/Michael**  
****Notes:** So I _may_ have based Michael's characterization on his portrayal in _Angel Sancturary_. Shh, don't tell anyone.**  
****Summary:** Adam, Michael, and their ridiculously domestic life.

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This is how it goes:

Adam says yes.

Adam lets Michael in.

Adam's soul is consumed, burns to nothing under the onslaught of divine fire, and he imagines someone telling him they're sorry.

Adam dies. (Again.)

ooo

This is how it goes:

Adam wakes up in a bed he doesn't recognize.

Adam isn't dead.

Adam, after some investigation, appears to be renting the apartment he woke up in with money that gets deposited anonymously in his bank account every month, and is about to start his first semester in med school in two weeks.

Adam doesn't think it makes up for all the shit he's been through, but he figures it's a start.

ooo

It's two months later when someone starts knocking really fucking loudly at his door at two thirty in the morning. Adam starts awake, winces at the papercut he gets when he jerks his head up from the anatomy book he fell asleep on top of, and it's with a lot of cursing he makes his way over to the door.

He's not prepared for the person on the other side. Granted, it's two thirty, and he's slept maybe ten hours in the past four days, so he's not really prepared for _anything_ right now.

"You just gonna fuckin' stand there?" Michael grumbles, looking small and cold and very unhappy.

"Wha...?" is the best Adam can manage, and he refuses to feel like an idiot for it. Two fucking thirty. Archangel outside his door. Archangel who looks like a fucking _preteen_.

Michael looks equal parts furious and mortified. "Dad made me a damn human. I..." he bites his lip. "I just didn't know where the fuck else to _go_, okay?" he spits out, runs a hand through the unruly mop of red hair on his head.

And Adam wants to turn him away. It may be uncharitable, but he really, _really_ does.

But Michael looks lost and vulnerable like any kid would after their dad abandoned them (and Adam can relate to _that_), so he can't.

He sighs. "Get in here. You can sleep on the couch."

ooo

Michael ends up never leaving. Adam is not surprised, and quite frankly suspects that that was always the _point_ of God setting him up with a big apartment and a steady flow of income, and then dumping the newly human Michael just on the other side of the city.

At least he's a fairly okay roommate. He's irritable and curses like a sailor, but he shares cooking, cleaning, and dishwashing duties without complaints, and he takes on the responsibility for the apartment's washing with a zeal that is really kind of disturbing.

(The only thing Adam has to complain about is Michael's strays. He brings the two cats home, one black and one cream, and says that they're keeping them. Adam puts up some resistance, but in the end it's kind of futile. He gets used checking his shoes for hairballs, and to waking up in the middle of the night with a cat attached to his face. He deals.) (Michael names the cats Lucifer and Gabriel, and then proceeds to crow in nasty glee when Lucifer ends up fat with kittens.)

So yeah, they live their little life, cooking together, eating together, washing dishes together, cleaning together, and Michael will play video games or read comics while Adam studies.

It's... comfortable. It's easy.

Of course something has to happen to mess it all up.

ooo

It's the Fourth of July, and they're on the roof of the apartment building, watching the fireworks. Michael's hand is startlingly warm when it slides into Adam's, holds on tightly.

At the time, Adam is too distracted by how _happy_ Michael looks, eyes on the sparkling sky, to think too much about it.

(The morning after, he'll wake with a snapshot of a dream behind his eyes, of that hand warm against his neck. And that's how it starts.)

ooo

It's just really fucking _wrong_, is Adam's point.

Michael is barely over five feet tall, and looks like he's _fifteen_, at the freaking _most_.

So _no_, he is not lusting after him. And he's _not_ in- ...Yeah, _definitely_ not that, either.

ooo

The problem with noticing that he might have some fucked up shit going on for his roommate, is that suddenly he starts noticing all the fucked up shit his _roommate_ has going on for _him_.

He really wishes he could go back to the time when he just didn't _notice_ things. Like the way Michael casually bumps into him when they cook, the way he sits down close next to him when they watch movies, the way he'll touch just a _second_ longer than necessary almost all the time. Like they way he'll smile widely, but with his eyes almost shy, when Adam says something nice to him. Like the way he _looks_ at Adam, like he's the only thing that matters.

It's terrifying as shit, and he pretty much already _knows_ that he's going to fuck this up somehow.

ooo

This is how it goes:

Michael kisses Adam, and his mouth tastes like popcorn and orange soda.

Adam kisses back for maybe a three seconds before he catches himself.

Adam pushes Michael away.

It's a fucking mess from there.

ooo

This is how it goes:

Adam tries to pretend it never happened.

Michael is angry and quiet.

Adam stays away a lot; long nights in the college library.

It goes on like this until Adam finds Michael on the roof, in the middle of a rainstorm, talking to God.

ooo

Okay, so Adam is a fucking douche. He knows this. He can live with this.

What he _can't_ live with is the unreasoning fear he feels when he comes home one night, and Michael isn't curled up sleeping on the couch, or in the bathroom, or in the kitchen, or in Adam's bedroom, taking his rage out on Adam's wardrobe.

It takes him forty minutes of running around the building, knocking on doors, asking frantic questions, before he thinks to check the roof.

And yeah, Michael is there, sitting on the edge of the roof, being pelted with rain, with a man Adam has never seen before.

"You said he'd fall in love with me," Michael accuses, sounding angry and betrayed.

"I said if both of you played your cards right, you might fall in love with each other. You both have free will, Michael; I can't make any definite promises, just educated guesses," the man says, calm and serene.

"It's not fair," Michael grumbles.

"Life, by nature, isn't fair," the man says. "And neither am I."

"Lucifer was right about you."

"Yeah, I suppose he was," the man sighs. "You should go inside," he says, looking over Michael's sopping wet clothes. "You might catch something."

"Fuck off, old man," Michael spits.

And God does.

It takes Adam about five minutes to work up the courage to go fetch his angel from the ledge.

ooo

Michael comes down with a truly vicious cold, and is, unsurprisingly, the most annoying patient ever.

"No! I don't wanna!" Michael protests, trying to bat away Adam's hands when he brings him his meds. He doesn't have too much success, what with being trapped on the couch, underneath more blankets than Adam was entirely sure he possessed and five cats.

"I don't care about what you want," Adam says matter-of-factly. "I care about you getting _better_."

"Asshole," Michael grumbles, and makes a series of incredibly unhappy noises when Adam puts the pills in his hand and glares at him until he swallows them all down. "You're worse than Raph ever was."

"Guilt-tripping is not going to work," Adam says as he stands up and motions towards the kitchen. "Do you think you can get some soup down?"

"No, I'll just throw it up," Michael sighs, and rolls over onto his side. The cats look annoyed at being disturbed, but obligingly move into new positions.

Adam sits down on the coffee table. "Anything else you want?"

"Not really," Michael grumbles. "I just want to be left alone."

And yeah, Adam knows that their issues aren't going to just magically disappear because Michael is sick. Sure, he could have _hoped_, but he's really not that big of an idiot.

"Look, about the-"

"Don't," Michael interrupts. "I don't wanna talk it."

"Yeah, well, tough luck, 'cause you can't really escape," he says, sighing. "You're a _kid_."

"I'm eons older than you," Michael points out, pissy as fuck.

"You _look_ like you're barely out of junior high."

"But I'm _not_," Michael protests, something fierce in his eyes. "And I _love_ you."

_Fuck,_ is pretty much Adam's reaction here. Because the way Michael says that makes something warm unfold in his chest, despite his every effort to exterminate it with extreme fucking prejudice.

"God damn it, why do you need to make this so fucking difficult?" Adam mumbles, rubs his hands across his face. "You make me feel like a pervy old man for thinking this way about you," he admits, softly, agonizingly.

"Imagine how it makes _me_ feel," Michael grumbles. "I've watched your species evolve out of _slime_."

And Adam laughs, because it's all really fucking liberating, to have everything more or less out there like this, to have Michael joke about it, and he finds himself leaning over to grab Michael's hand, entwining their fingers. "I'm still not comfortable with any... You know, _serious_ stuff, okay? You look _way_ too young."

"Well, if you're going to be a fuckin' prude about it, I guess I can wait for you," Michael retorts, rolling his eyes, and the smile teasing at his lips is the best thing Adam's seen in_weeks_.

"Just, give me a couple of years, okay?" he asks, pressing a soft kiss to Michael's fingers.

"I'll hold you to it," Michael replies.


End file.
